1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and a system for managing semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
2. Related Art
In management systems for manufacturing equipment, such as semiconductor manufacturing equipment, to decide whether or not the manufacturing equipment is operating normally, an interlock system is generally adopted which detects data on a parameter such as the temperature or pressure of the functional part of the manufacturing equipment, and stops the operation of the manufacturing equipment when the data indicates an abnormal value.
According to this interlock system, it is possible to immediately stop the operation of the manufacturing equipment when an abnormal data value is detected, and thereby minimize the ejection of nonconforming products.
However, in a conventional interlock system such as mentioned above, when the etching steps from beginning to end of etching work on a plasma etching system are controlled according to changes in the plasma emission intensity, the plasma emission intensity varies greatly from beginning to end of the etching process, so that the plasma emission intensity cannot be used as a parameter to detect a malfunction of the equipment.
In the interlock system, only one decision is made whether or not data values of a single parameter exceed a predetermined range, and it is impossible to capture time-series changes between data values. Therefore, it is not easy to catch a malfunction accurately.
Further, in the interlock system, even if a plurality of parameters are combined, it is hard to give correlation between the parameters, and it is difficult to catch a malfunction accurately.